The folks at HTC Smart Mobility have some new cell phones to talk about, such as the Verizon 5800, with its easy-to-use, layout and interface with QWERTY keyboard, perfect for both the corporate exec—and the soccer mom. And we loved the HTC Touch, HTC’s entry in the iPhone-killer wars. The Touch has a touch screen (duh), utilizes Windows Mobile 6, and has an interface with impressive 3D elements. To learn more about both phones, and HTC’s new TouchFLO technology, check out the video.

At Pepcom’s Digital Experience, we had a chance to interview Belkin and get an up close and personal look at all the new peripherals they introduced at CES this year. Take a look at the video to see their 4-way, USB- and audio-enabled KVM switch, available this summer for $169. Additionally, they demoed an intelligent surge protector with six individually controlled outlets and two always-on outlets. Add to this a wireless on/off switch to activate or kill the six outlets and you have a nifty device to help kill the phantom power drain that’s so prevalent in today’s chargers and adapters when they’re not in use.

We also check out a few cool iPhone and iPod peripherals and the Rockstar—a five way minijack (headphone) splitter, available for $39.95 this summer.

And finally, we take a quick look at the N52te gamer “WASD replacement” pad. With a bunch of programmable macro options, an integrated scroll wheel and just enough buttons to get things done in TF2, it’s going on sale this month for $69.99 with a first look in the video.

I’m what you would refer to as a cost-sensitive buyer. I’m obsessive about value propositions with my purchases. And I would buy the $400 Beats by Dr. Dre headphones by Dre & Monster Cable.

We got a private demo with Monster and had the opportunity to listen to what’s amounted to more than two years of obsessive research and attention to detail. All the materials, the drivers, the amplifier and more are clearly thought out and it shows. The response from these is absolutely incredible. Their intent was to allow you to listen to the music as the producer intended and dare I say it’s as faithful reproduction as you’ll find on a $400 set of headphones. It’s enough that I would buy these before buying the nearest-priced Logitech system for my computer. The bass response was impressive to the Nth—low bass held its tonal quality through a great deal of dynamic range, something not usually seen. The midrange was rich and warm and perfectly presented and the high ends came out just as well.

I’m sad because I really want these. I mean, I was upset that I had to go home tomorrow to my sound system, and that it’s nothing close to how these performed. They were comfortable, sexy, and sounded absolutely incredible.

Try these when they come out in June. But only if you’re prepared to buy them.

Altech Lansing has come up with the T612 Digital Audio System for iPhone. The device will alert you to incoming calls and will pause so that you can answer. When your call is complete, simply redock and the music continues. The T612 features neodymium speakers and XdB bass-enhancement technology, and is also compatible with new-gen iPods. An aux-in jack provides other PMP access. A wireless remote allows power, track adjustments, bass and treble controls, song selection, play/pause, and more. Look for its debut this February at retailers for $199.95.

This morning, Steve Jobs demoed the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware, which looked strangely similar to the one we showed you guys a few weeks back that many were calling fake. Well as it turns out, the leak was real, but we did miss a few things, such as chapter options and language compatibility in iPod mode. The 1.1.3 firmware also features lyrics support for music. Rounding out the features are all the things we showed you in our iPhone 1.1.3 video - Web clips (web bookmarks on home screen), Maps with location finder, Home Screen customization, and SMS multiple people.

By the way, if you are looking for an excellent program to create custom ringtones for your iPhone, check out iPhone RingToneMaker.

We got a chance to catch up with Noel Lee, Head Monster of Monster Cable to talk to him about their newly announced Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. Noel goes into the background and development of these amazing headphones, the two-year development, and the relationship with Dr. Dre. Be sure to also check out our Beats by Dr. Dre photo gallery to get a good look at these things.

Bowers & Wilkins’ Zeppelin captured the Best Audio Component Award at this year’s CES. Compatible with nanos, 5G iPods, as well as other MP3 players, it will hold thousands of digital stereo tracks and looks kewl as well. It features a frequency range of -6dB at 47Hz, a 22kHz amplifier, and a power output 1x 50W (bass) 2x 25W (midrange/tweeter.) Connect with inputs of 30-pin iPod or 3.5 mini-jack or TOS link and output by S-video. At a size of 7.8 x 25.2 x 8.2-inches and a weight of 16.5 lbs, the Zeppelin is available at the Apple Store for $599.95.

I have 1.1.1. when i play a song on the ipod and start surfing using safari the music stops. i believe this is a bug. i tried this on a 1.1.2 iphone in the apple store and also experience the same behavior. can you please check if this is fixed in 1.1.3? (Asked here)

This isn’t so much a bug in 1.1.2 as it is a protection. The music will stop playing if the web page you are visiting consumes too much memory. When you load a page in Safari, if it needs more memory, it will unload pages in other tabs. If that isn’t enough, it talks to Springboard, which will start closing other applications, one of which is iPod.

That said, in our testing on 1.1.3, we were able to both listen to music and browse in Safari at the same time.

Do you have any idea how much of this is going to apply to the iPod touch? (Asked here)

I am sure the iPod touch will also gain the ability to move icons around. However, the touch doesn’t have the SMS or Maps apps, which is where a lot of the new features are found.

Does 1.1.3 seem more stable than previous versions of the iPhone software? Also, can you please provide a more in-depth look at the new Google Maps? In addition, can you please explain how the iPhone creates an icon for the Safari bookmarks (for the home screen)? Does it automatically take a snapshot of the top-left corner of the website? (Asked here)

I guess you can say it feels more stable in some cases - but then again, it did crash once in our video. Certainly feels more complete.I am not sure how much more in-depth we can go with the Maps app, as we showed all the new functionality in the video. Lastly, the iPhone takes a snapshot of the left side of your screen to create the bookmark icon. So if you zoomed into the bottom-right of a website, the snapshot would be of the left side of the bottom right. Make sense?

Do you see these changes as a preview of what’s to come in February with the release of the SDK? (Asked here)

I am sure a lot of the changes that are in place in the 1.1.3 firmware are in preparation for the SDK. I am also sure there are under-the-hod changes that are less obvious that we don’t even know about yet.

Our iPhone 1.1.3 news has been blowing up the Internet. Quite a few people think the images in our iPhone 1.1.3 image gallery were fake, so we figured, why not put up a video? Here is our video proof that iPhone 1.1.3 firmware is, in fact, real. Any questions you want answered about it? Let us know in our iPhone 1.1.3 thread. By the way, if you are looking for an excellent program to create custom ringtones for your iPhone, check out iPhone RingToneMaker.

Meantime, the video shows you all the features that we have found (so far) in the 1.1.3 update. That includes the home screen shuffling and reorganizing of the icons, the multi-person SMS sending, the new “Locate Me” feature in the Google Maps application, Hybrid mode in Google Maps, and creating web bookmarks and putting them on your home screen.

At the end of the video, we show you the Gear Live custom painted iPhone that we will be giving away to one of you viewers, courtesy of Monster Cable.